Major Spoilers Question Of The Day: MST3K Memorial Edition

There are a number of things that I miss about the 1990s: The X-Files… The 5-Year-Gap Legion Of Super-Heroes… Being in my 20s… But if I could bring back one thing from that decade, it would unequivocally be Mystery Science Theatre 3000. From a simple premise and cheap film rights was born a truly original viewing experience, full of talented, funny folks trying only to make one another laugh. (It also spurred a lot of people to yell at real movie screens, which you should not do, because you’re not as funny as them. Also, it’s rude. But mostly the first thing…) I’m not even particular about which version of the crew I’d bring back, as I don’t think that there’s a bad configuration of that group, which leads us to today’s not too distant query…

The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) wouldn’t mind seeing a riffed take on ‘Apocalypse Now’ so that I could love something about that film (other than some of the performances), asking: If you could send any movie to the Satellite Of Love for the MST3K treatment, which film would you choose? (Bonus query: Would you want it to be riffed by Joel or by Mike?)

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Once upon a time, there was a young nerd from the Midwest, who loved Matter-Eater Lad and the McKenzie Brothers... If pop culture were a maze, Matthew would be the Minotaur at its center. Were it a mall, he'd be the Food Court. Were it a parking lot, he’d be the distant Cart Corral where the weird kids gather to smoke, but that’s not important right now... Matthew enjoys body surfing (so long as the bodies are fresh), writing in the third person, and dark-eyed women. Amongst his weaponry are such diverse elements as: Fear! Surprise! Ruthless efficiency! An almost fanatical devotion to pop culture!
And a nice red uniform.

6 Comments

Tough call. My teenage goddaughter and I do our own MST3K almost every weekend, going to rent bad or cheesy movies to riff on our own (complete with a Tom Servo replica a friend built for me), so I know there are plenty of movies that would be ripe for the MST3K treatment. Not to mention there is the spiritual successors to MST3K, such as RiffTrax, that have done many movies both good and bad.

In honor of the old MST3K episodes where they riffed old Japanese monster movies (including old Godzilla and Gamera movies), I’d love to see both crews riff the more recent versions of those movies, such as those released in the last 20 years. I’d love for Joel to riff the updated Gamera films with the bots, while Mike and Joel can split the updated Godzilla and related films (like the Mothra films). Ideally, I’d love to see them both riff “Godzilla: Final Wars” together since that movie combined not only monsters from across various Japanese Godzilla continuities, it also included a fight between Japanese Godzilla and Zilla (the Matthew Broderick CGI American Godzilla). So a team-up/dueling riffs seems appropriate in that case.

Konga is a hilarious King Kong knock-off, that has to be seen to be believed. Crow line “A planet where apes evolved from plants!? It’s a mad house!”

“Dr. Jekyll vs. The Werewolf” and it’s sequel(?) “The Fury of the Wolfman” These movies can be summed up with “And now it’s time for another episode of… Samurai Werewolf!” Seriously main character look a LOT like John Belushi.

“The Apple” would just be a weird film to do, especially because I don’t think they ever did musicals, but this one is just bizarre.

All of these I think would work better with Mike at the helm, “The Apple” could work as a Joel episode however.

Offhand, the closest I can think to musicals was usually done with the MST crew, like at the end of the movie “Werewolf” when Mike and the bots sang over the tune of the end credits with a medley of mostly well-known songs (and kept repeating “TUSK!”), or multiple instances during the course of the Gamera films. So we at least know if they were to ever riff a musical, they would certainly have the talents to twist it around.

Hmmm, let’s see, a perfect MST’d movie requires a few things.
1: Usually not a comedy. I say usually in that there are always comedies that are SO bad that you can make it work.
2: Usually needs to be serious enough in some way that it actually needs to have the wind taken out of it through injecting levity. Makes the jokes funnier when they come at a supposed ‘serious’ moment. It’s why monster, horror and ‘deep’ drama movies work so well.
3: Stilted dialogue or long, slow scenes give tons of fill time for dropping really good comment bombs.
4: Bad movies are better, naturally. One, it’s easier (though the RiffTrax stuff has shown that there are even good movies that can take the MST treatment), and two, I tend to avoid bad movies, so I can watch some of them for the first time with the help of my robot friends.

So, any that come to mind? Dune. Narnia. Battleship. Twister (through the constant noise in the movie might make it more of a pain).
And lastly, Beaches and Steel Magnolias, just because my wife loves them, and it would be funny to have some jokes thrown in there that she will never be unable to hear in her head ever again. For some reason, that sentence doesn’t work for me, but I can’t parse how to say it better.